Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
Pre-Race Notes
Angie’s List Grand Prix of Indianapolis – Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Round 5 of 16 in the 2015 Verizon IndyCar Series
DATE: Thursday – Saturday, May 7-9, 2015
QUALIFYING BROADCAST: Live on the INDYCAR 15 app at 3 p.m. ET Friday, May 8, INDYCAR Radio Network and
www.indycar.com (timing & scoring)
RACE BROADCAST: Live on ABC, Saturday, May 9 at 3:30 p.m. ET
RADIO BROADCAST: The race will air on the INDYCAR Radio Network, Sirius 213& XM 209
TRACK LAYOUT: 2.439-mile, 14-turn road course
RACE LENGTH: 82 laps / 200 miles
2014 WINNER: Simon Pagenaud
2014 POLESITTER: Sebastian Saavedra (83.8822; 104.672 mph)
RLLR TOP START/
FINISH AT IMS (ROAD): 12th by Rahal in 2014/ 12th by Servia in 2014; one event
- RAHAL’S BEST START/
FINISH AT IMS (ROAD): 12th / 21st – both in 2014; one event
RAHAL’S HIGHEST SERIES
START/FINISH: Pole at St. Pete 2009 & Kansas 2009 / 1st in St. Pete in 2008
NEWS & NOTES:
RAHAL LETTERMAN LANIGAN RACING & THE GP OF INDY
The Angie’s List Grand Prix of Indianapolis will mark the second Verizon IndyCar Series race on the 2.439-mile road course. Last year the team prepared an entry for Graham Rahal and Oriol Servia. Rahal started 12th, ran as high as sixth and was 11th when he was hit by the lapped car of Montoya on a restart on Lap 51/82 and ultimately finished 21st. Servia qualified 22nd and was struck by the flying tire of another car after the standing start. He was forced to pit for a new front wing which put him out of sequence. Later he led seven laps but the team’s hope to capitalize on a caution flag didn’t pan out and he had to pit for a late-race splash of fuel which limited him to a 12th place finish. For 2015, RLL has entered the No. 15 Steak ‘n Shake Honda-Dallara-Firestone car for Graham Rahal.
GRAHAM ON THEGP OF INDIANAPOLIS
In the inaugural Angie’s List Grand Prix of Indianapolis in 2014, Rahal started 12th, ran as high as sixth and was 11th when he was hit by Montoya on a restart on Lap 51/82 and ultimately finished 21st. Rahal is hot off one of the best runs of his career at the previous race at Barber Motorsports Park. He returned to the track in sixth place from his final pit stop with 19 laps to go and was 21-seconds behind race leader Josef Newgarden. By the time he passed reigning series champion Will Power and then Ryan Hunter-Reay for fourth, he was still 18.9 seconds behind Newgarden but in the final 11 laps he turned lap times that were one-to-two-seconds faster than the race leader and passed Castroneves. On the final lap he passed second-place Scott Dixon and closed the gap to eventual winner Newgarden to 2.2-seconds. Who knows what could have happened if only there were two more laps to go in the race. Rahal is looking forward to picking up where he left off on the IMS road course.
“I hope a lot of the set up for Barber works for the Grand Prix of Indianapolis. We’re going to start from a pretty similar set up as we did there. Barber went so well for the Steak ‘n Shake team, I don’t know why you would change the car so much. We were pretty competitive on the Indy road course last year and had a solid baseline setup so that will help as well. Last year, we had run in the top five or six and then Montoya, who was a lap down, hit us on a restart and ended our day with plenty of racing to go. I hope we can have a really good weekend this year. We are so close in points now that a good finish would mean so much to us as a team. We need to be good and continue to rack up points. We’re only nine points out of fifth place in the championship. If we can have a couple of good days, we can slide right up in there. The car felt pretty good in Barber so I hope it transfers to Indy. We get a lot of practice time on Thursday so we should be alright. Momentum is pretty important to have heading into May and we have it right now. We just need to keep it.”
POINT STANDINGS AFTER FOUR OF 16 RACES
Rahal is ranked eighth in series point standings with a total of 103 and is only seven points out of a sixth place rank (Hinchcliffe & Kanaan, 110). He is only nine points out of fifth place (Will Power, 112).
-RLL-
